I remember being really disappointed with the Mercury game on the PSP, but for the life of me I can't remember why. Do you know if this new version fixed whatever problem it was I had with the PSP version?

However - and this is on me really - I also tend to associate the Sun-Skin post with the other one that is punctuated by rather slutty pictures (um... part of the title is Having Fun, I think?) On that one, I got as far as the splayed naked woman on the car hood, and just wasn't much interested in visiting that thread again. It is my own linking of the two - and disinterest in the Sunday WOMEN's Skin topic that has led me to conclude that the locker room isn't always for me.

Quote from: mytocles on June 15, 2007, 05:35:32 PM

Here is an exercise to try: go to the This is Fun thread, locate the naked female splayed on the car hood - and show it to your wife, girlfriend, female co-worker, or sister. Ask her what she thinks about a professional forum with pictures such as that. I went to that site, thinking of finding some Fun Fotos... and I would have enjoyed going beyond that picture, if I hadn't been totally offended by it. I am not a prude, that was not the issue for me. Some men will disagree, but I felt that the picture represented the whole "demeaning of women" gig. Yeah, I was in college when the whole Women's Libber thing happened, but many people - not just me - agree that women should be treated with more respect than that. And people, men or women, who are disrespected, often enough, would likely not hang around for very long.

So we've got mytocles, a long time Gone Gold/Console Gold/Gaming Trend reader, who posts that she was so offended by a picture in the "This is Fun" thread that she didn't want to read past the first page. So offended that when we're talking about the Sunday Skin posts, she recalls this car hood picture from another thread as a perfect example of a demeaning picture that could drive away someone such as herself.

If people want to mock my arguments in this thread or in the latest Sunday Skin, fine, whatever, I can take it. But I see the picture bump in the "This is Fun" thread as a big F.U. to mytocles, and anyone who might share her opinion. As a forum we're saying that women should not only expect and tolerate the locker room mentality, but if they bring up something that's particularly offensive to them we're going to shove it in their faces?

If the forum considers this an acceptable way to treat not just a hypothetical female demographic, but an actual female forumer who's been an active poster for years, I guess I should start including myself in the demographic that's being driven away by the locker room mentality.

I think of Mario Bros. and I can picture Goombas, Koopa Troopers, Shy Guys, those Ninja guys, Hammer Bros., the list of memorable characters goes on and on. I think of Sonic and all I can picture are coins and loop-de-loops, the course layouts basically, and this is coming from someone who grew up owning a Genesis and a Game Gear instead of a SNES and a Gameboy.

If Blu-Ray succeeds as a format, I doubt the PS3 will have anything to do with it. It sounds more like Blu-Ray may succeed more out of backroom negotiations with key players (Blockbuster, movie studios, manufacturers, etc). The only thing is, those deals are going to cut into any financial windfall Sony may reap from "winning"... kind of like the "even if they win they lose" console war they are currently engaged in.

If Blu-Ray movies are currently keeping pace with or outselling HD-DVD movies, and 1.4 out of the 1.5 million Blu-Ray players are PS3s, I don't see how you could argue that the PS3 had little to no influence. If the 1.4 million PS3 owners on average buy just one movie each, the 0.1 million stand-alone owners would each have to buy 14 movies to have the same effect.

I really like the idea of swimming but I don't and probably never will have a decent sized pool. That means I have to pay someplace a membership fee, leave my house and drive there, workout, shower and change and come back home. There's just too many loopholes for me to ever make that a consistent habit.

Ain't that the truth. It's hard enough for me to get to my gym sometimes, and it's right across the street from my apartment.

There's a drawing for 200 beta accounts going on at warcry. Some new information on the official website regarding the mechanics of ship combat, and it looks like a listing of ship types, but I haven't had a chance to browse those articles yet.

Hope this game's still on track to be released soon, is the release date still just "sometime after June?"

I was on a great exercise routine early this year, then slacked off for a few months. I'm back on track now:

Strength training 2-3 times a week, alternating upper+core and lower+core, with a 1 mile jog on the treadmill as a warm-up.

Jogging 3-4 times a week, mostly 2-3 miles with one 4-5 mile "long run"

Swimming tossed in every now and then as cross-training.

My main focus now is working up my cardio health and gradually increasing my weekly mileage and so I can more easily go longer distances. I've got my sights on a half-marathon in October. I have a 12 week training schedule that I'm planning to follow that starts on July 17th with 3-4 mile runs on week one, so I'm ahead of schedule.

If you ever find yourself using the browser for more than novelty or a very quick trip to check your mail, let us know.

I use the Internet Channel on the Wii, and I have my regular PC on a desk just behind my couch, and a HTPC hooked to my TV that has a keyboard with a built in touchpad.

The Wii boots up faster than the regular PC, and it's easier to just grab the Wii remote on the coffee table than it is to go grab the HTPC keyboard that's next to the TV. Besides that, the Wii browser's zoom function does a much better job of making things legible on my SD TV than simply enlarging the text on Firefox with the HTPC. The Wii is also my preferred way to look up guitar tabs. It's awkward to play the guitar at my regular PC, and the Wii does a better job at blocking the myriad of pop-ups on the tablature websites than Firefox.

I wouldn't want to type a post like this one with the Wii remote, but for typing URLs or a few words here and there into a search box it works great. I mean, the Wii remote is pretty much equivalent to having a mouse. Imagine if you had a picture of a keyboard on your screen and you had to use the mouse to point and click to spell out a URL. Slower than a keyboard, for sure, but I'll bet you could click the word out pretty fast.

Why in the world do you want to use opera on your Wii? Can you download stuff from the net like you can on a PS3? Does the Wii have mouse/kb compatibility to making surfing useful (which it is only barely on the PS3, and I think its fair to say the differences in systems has been convered). What's the real point here? And of course, why is Nintendo bilking you people out of 5$ is another good question.

The pointer works pretty well (the controller even does a slight rumble when you pass over hyperlinks).

And while it's of course nowhere near as fast as a real keyboard, pointing and clicking at an onscreen keyboard to type is loads faster than using a d-pad or an analog stick.

If the game tiles really are the same size as the stylus tip, I'd say it's more the fault of the game designer than the DS. The stylus was plenty accurate for me on Ouendan when I had to rapidly hit tiny (but not too tiny!) dots all over the place on insane difficulty.

A 5 liter V8 is a closer match to the rally cars than a 2.4L turbo 4-cylinder engine? You're crazy. It may be front wheel drive, but wasn't the whole point of the SRT-4 to go after the market interested in WRXs and Evos?

I'm always up for multiplayer, but it seems like we haven't been meeting critical mass these days.

I've come to the realization that I just don't care for the American cars in the game. I needed something for a B-class North America only series, and I just couldn't find any cars that interested me. I ended up cheating by using an Acura NSX, an American branded Japanese car trying to be an Italian car doesn't seem like what they had in mind for the race.

As I'm typing this I'm realizing I should've given the Dodge Neon a try since I like the WRX and the Evo so much.

From reading about this, it doesn't seem like Blockbuster is so much trying to influence the market as it is reacting. They're not siding with Blu-Ray because they want Blu-Ray to win, they're siding with Blu-Ray because for them it was renting less terribly than HD-DVD, which hasn't been renting at all.

This drives me crazy as well. It doesn't help that their belief in the need for double clicking gets reinforced by their clumsy clicking. They'll try a single click, but miss the link or button. When they then mouse over it properly, they double click, and viola! It works! Must be because of the double clicking!

Played it for the first time with my fiancee and another couple last night. We had a lot of fun, but our main complaint was that they didn't have us playing minigames enough. We had to move our pieces around the game for what seemed like 5-6 minutes before we could have a brief 30 second minigame at the end of the round. We only played the Monopoly style map where you invest in hotels, so I don't know if the other boards bring in more minigames.

After that we had some fun spending time just playing minigames freeform, but of course we wished we had more of them unlocked. Overall I think we all agreed the 3 on 1 games were the most fun, it's really fun to all team up against someone.

So thumbs up from us, but it'd be a lot better if the boardgame moved faster so we didn't have to wait so long between minigames.

Pigeons are considered good eating in Italy, so as a carry-over from the old world in a lot of Little Italy districts around America you can find people who still train hawks to hunt down pigeons and bring them back for the hawker to roast. As Tebunker said, it's very fun to pit two hawkers against each other for your business, you can see some pretty impressive aerial maneuvers as the birds try to beat each other to the kill.

Or maybe Tebunker's just talking about people who stand in the doorway yelling to draw people in, one or the other.

Why are you still on the "live with or leave it" angle? The skin threads don't bother me, I look at them, I don't have a problem with them.

Quote from: Knightshade Dragon on June 14, 2007, 02:43:48 PM

I'm interested in seeing how this plays out. I'll give it to this Sunday and we'll see then.

But clearly Ron's interested in at least examining the issue. I would wager that he's more interested in hearing people's thoughts for and against the issue than he is in just throwing up a poll and going with the winner.

Quote from: Blackadar on June 15, 2007, 03:39:38 PM

Quote from: wonderpug on June 15, 2007, 03:29:27 PM

Consider, in your ardent faith in the word of the poll, that Turtle, who initiated this round of discussion about whether the skin posts are turning away, said that he likes them.

So depending on whether he and I voted for option 1, option 2, or option 1 and 2, we could've added 2-6 "poll points" towards keeping them as-is, despite both thinking that they might be turning away the female demographic.

I guess this is a TV show now. Do you know what the "female demographic" consists of? And do we take a worse ratings hit by removing any/all offensive threads or by keeping them? Let's hire Gallup to find out!

If you're going to post again, answer this - is the argument that Sunday Skin - and NSFW threads like it - are too offensive, or is it that Ron's posting these the problem? It's either one or the other. Define the issue, please.

The female demographic consists of females who may be interested in gaming forum, or just an off-topic forum with people they relate to. And I don't know if removing skin threads will make us gain more people than we lose, I thought that was the whole point of Turtle bringing up the discussion.

And as for your ultimatum, I think the issue at hand is whether threads full of skin pictures make the site less welcoming to women. As a point in the discussion of that issue, I personally think that if the skin threads are coming from the site staff on a regular basis, it sets more of an example than if it's just a forumer posting the thread.